All Over Creation

Ruth Ozeki’s 2003 novel, All Over Creation, enlists potatoes, biotechnology, and agribusiness to explore the themes of diversity, racism, and responsibility. After a twenty-five-year absence, Yumi Fuller returns to her Idaho hometown to assist her ailing parents, Lloyd and Momoko. The tensions that drove Yumi away at age fourteen still fester, and long-standing resentments surface as Yumi struggles to care for her fundamentalist father. When a band of environmental activists calling themselves “The Seeds of Resistance” shows up, their campaign to protect God’s “creation” uncovers unexpected common ground between Yumi and her parents.

While serving overseas during WWII, Lloyd Fuller met and married a Japanese woman. He returned to Liberty Falls, Idaho with his bride, Momoko, and they took up large-scale potato farming. In 1960, or thereabout, their daughter Yumi was born.

The white residents of Liberty Falls responded to Yumi’s unusual name and mixed-race appearance with unsurprising insensitivity. Her schoolmates called her “Yummy,” and her teachers repeatedly cast her as the Indian princess in the annual Thanksgiving play. Following her performance at age fourteen, Yumi was accosted by Elliot Rhodes, her twenty-something history teacher. First, he ranted against the play’s complicity in mythologizing the European exploitation of Native Americans, and then he seduced Yumi. When Yumi realized she was pregnant, Elliot arranged an abortion. Lloyd learned about the transgression, and his fury over Yumi’s sinful actions compelled her to run away.



Twenty-five years later, Yumi is single and living in Hawaii. Her three children – Phoenix, Ocean, and Poo – hardly resemble one another, as each has a different father of different ethnicity. Having put herself through school, Yumi works part-time jobs teaching Asian-American studies and selling real estate. Except for occasional letters to her parents over the years, Yumi’s anger toward Lloyd, in particular, has prevented any meaningful contact with them.

When Yumi receives an unexpected email from her childhood friend, Cass, she reluctantly decides to head for Liberty Falls. Lloyd had a series of heart attacks after Yumi left and eventually sold his potato farm to Cass and her husband, Will Quinn. The Fullers then devoted themselves to propagating heirloom seeds with, on Lloyd’s part, missionary zeal.

Concerned with maximizing their farm’s profits, the Quinns have continued to grow only the reliable Russet potato with help from pesticides. As the Fuller’s closest neighbor, Cass Quinn has assumed the role of caretaker for the aging couple, but now their health is rapidly declining. In her email, Cass tells Yumi that Lloyd has colon cancer and that Momoko, suffering from dementia, needs assistance.



When Yumi returns to Liberty Falls with her three, mixed-race children, she immediately experiences the alienation she felt as a child in the all-white town: “I was a random fruit in a field of genetically identical potatoes.” Moreover, Yumi, who has a limited sense of responsibility toward her own children, is ill-prepared to take care of her parents. Arthritic, Lloyd requires a lot of help, including changing his colostomy bag, a task Yumi shrinks from.

Because of her dementia, Momoko has forgotten the words for basic household items, but she retains the gardening skills she learned in Japan. After moving to Idaho, Momoko created a kitchen garden of vegetables “no one had ever seen before in Power County.” Then, after selling his large-scale potato operation, Lloyd embraced the bio-diversity of Momoko’s garden as salvation, of sorts, from the evils of monoculture farming. Along with the mail-order catalog he and Momoko assembled to market their exotic seeds, Lloyd publishes a newsletter in which he rails against genetically modified seeds as a corruption of God’s creation.

Lloyd also condemns monoculture, or the practice of growing crops from “genetically identical” seeds, as “explicitly racist.” Momoko echoes this idea while showing Yumi a hybrid squash she created. Pointing at Yumi’s mixed-race children, Momoko proudly declares her squash is “like them. All mixed up.”



Meanwhile, a small group of activists calling themselves “The Seeds of Resistance” roam the West coast preaching against genetically engineered foods. Geek, Lilith, Charmey, “Y,” and their newest recruit, Frank, stage protests in grocery stores to decry “Robocrops” and “Frankenfoods.” When they happen upon Lloyd’s newsletter, they decide he’s “a prophet of the Revolution” and make a beeline for Liberty Falls in their fry-oil-fueled RV.

Yumi welcomes “The Seeds” arrival, regarding them as extra hands in her struggle to manage her parents’ health and seed business. Lloyd is mistrustful, however, until Y proves himself skilled at nursing, and Geek talks about his opposition to industrial agriculture. Lloyd and Geek bond over their shared loathing for “terminator technology,” which prevents seeds from reproducing, thus forcing farmers to purchase them annually from corporations.

Like most large-scale potato farmers, Will and Cass use pesticides on their crops but dislike doing so. They have tried to have children without success and suspect that Cass’s numerous miscarriages are related to the chemicals saturating the land. When Cynaco, an agribusiness corporation, offers them the opportunity to grow experimental fields of their newly patented “NuLife” potato, the Quinns agree. Although they have reservations about the potato, which has pesticide spliced into its genes, it will reduce their use of chemical sprays.



After Geek fails to dissuade Will from growing the NuLife potatoes, he hatches a plan to turn the NuLife fields into grounds for an anti-biotech demonstration. With Lloyd’s support, he plans a teach-in at the Fuller house in conjunction with the activists “digging up the [NuLife] potatoes to protest genetic engineering.” Cynaco representatives are aware of “The Seeds” local presence and suspect trouble. To monitor the situation, they send their PR officer to town, who is, coincidentally, Elliot Rhodes.

Soon after Elliot arrives, he and Yumi renew their intimate relationship. Already an inattentive parent, Yumi now leaves her children in Cass’s care for long stretches of time. Cass becomes so enamored with the baby, Poo, she attempts to kidnap him, but reconsiders before anyone knows. Meanwhile, “Seeds” activists Frank and Charmey have a baby girl and name her Tibet.

On the day The Seeds stage their protest at Will’s farm, Eliot sends his assistant to keep the activists’ actions in check. He takes extreme measures and blows up the group’s RV, killing Charmey in the blast. The police wrongly blame the tragedy on a faulty propane tank.



Lloyd dies, although not before Yumi comes to appreciate his advocacy for diversity. Finished with Elliot, Yumi moves her mother and children back to Hawaii. Cass and Will finally become parents when Frank asks them to adopt Tibet.

All Over Creation received the 2003 American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation.